Wondering about the 46 defense that Greg willams uses.I understand that the chicago bears made it famous in the eightys.The 46 often has a five man rush and a 3 0n 3 middle ratio that can be combined with changing blitz rushes.I wonder if this can lead to secondary issues if the blitz is picked up by the offense.I know the skins didn't have much of a problem with that in 04.I know teams next year will try and find away to beat the rush of the skins.

the point of it is to force a pass in so little time, that a deep threat isn't exactly possible, except yac. williams could use a better rusher off the ends, which is why im still hoping to draft a DE. it allows you to get a decent rush on certain plays, while giving the blitz look, but then send a LB into coverage, and possibly force an int. with marcus and lavar, who both have decent cover skills, it seems that this concept would favor our personnel.

just

THN's resident jerk.

Glock .40 Model 22 - First* line of home defense.... 'ADT' is for liberals.

the point of it is to force a pass in so little time, that a deep threat isn't exactly possible, except yac.

That's exactly how Gibbs and the Redskins beat the Bears in a conference semifinal during the SB 21 season. The week before "the wind bowl", the Hogs-plus picked up the Bears blitz, and Jay Schroeder kept lobbing the ball to Art Monk, who ran a long, long way.

Ditka was in shock...

(Claimed the Bears had lost because Doug Flutie was too short to see over the Redskin defense. After the Redskins beat them the next year, with Jim McMahon back at QB, the Redskin players said, "So McMahon is too tall". They kept chanting, "Too short! too tall!".)

Only one question, welch. I can't remember ever seeing Jay Shroeder "lobbing" the ball. His "lobs" were 60 mph instead of 70mph.

Truly said, JF...but just for that game, Schroeder threw some soft ones.

He just sort of looped the passes as he was being over-run by Dent and Singletary and the others...

And the the key, which I'll repeat, is that Schroeder knew that Monk was going to take the take the ball away from anybody else. No question, no doubt...a high floater over the middle, and that ball was going to belong to Art Monk, and he was going to run over or around any Bears defenders.

Maybe it's true that the Giants that year feared Gary Clark more than they feared Art Monk, as King wrote. Maybe. But they were a different team playing a different defense, and the Bears feared Art Monk.

Part 2, after some thought during a long drive up to Worcester for my daughter's birthday.

(Worcester is hockey country, US. Wow, it was a biting cold, with every pond and lake frozen. and skaters everywhere. No sign that people have dropped away from the Worcester Icecats, the AHL team).

Gibbs and the best Redskins teams beat the best 46 defenses by pure stength, extra blocking ("max-protect") and great receivers. The Redskins of '87 onward beat the Bears in two playoff games, after the '84 loss gave Gibbs time to analyze the pure 46. The Bears had superb players: Singletary, (sp), Wilbur Marshall, Richard Dent.

The Redskins consistently solved the Eagles 46 when Buddy ran it, even though the Eagles had great players. Think of Reggie White, Andre Waters, and Jerome Brown, for starters.

Gibbs principle was to use that aggressiveness against the 46. He also used some loud-mouth statements from Bears and Eagles players. Most of us remember the "body bag" comments, and the way the Hogs crushed the Eagles in the playoff that year.

*

The Bears and the Eagles had great players.

The Falcons played a similar all-out blitizing defense, and the Redskins beat them so badly, twice, in the SB 26 season, that Gibbs pulled Rypien for Jeff Rutledge (one of the worst QB's ever to start for a Gibbs team), and the Skins players asked the Falcons to cut the blitzing because the the score was embarrasing. The Skins said said something like "Please stop that, or we'll score 70 points...".

The Falcons had mediocre players, and Gibbs kept his H-back in for protection, alongside Byner. They mowed down the Falcons, leaving Clark and Monk and Sanders, in rotation, free to run all over the field. Check the scores, and remember that Glanville's Falcons were good enough to go to the playoffs.

I think the big offensive plays were still run-after-catch, and who, of course, were better at that than Monk and Clark?
In the Falsons game, the one of the dry field, the passes were more like 15 and 20 yarders, than the playoff, played in a driving rainstorm.

Last edited by welch on Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[quote="skinpride1"]Wondering about the 46 defense that Greg willams uses.I understand that the chicago bears made it famous in the eightys.The 46 often has a five man rush and a 3 0n 3 middle ratio that can be combined with changing blitz rushes.I wonder if this can lead to secondary issues if the blitz is picked up by the offense.I know the skins didn't have much of a problem with that in 04.I know teams next year will try and find away to beat the rush of the skins.[/quote]

Yes, fundamentally the defense doesn't work. There's one too few defenders (if all eligible receivers go into the pattern,) but this fact is prefaced by the lack of time the QB has and the fact that it's very hard at short distances to spread out receivers so that one defender in not in immediate vicinity of defenders.

I think as was stated before, we're missing that consistent rush from the ends to run a good 46. If Barrow plays he'll stuff the middle, we have DT's that can stuff the run, OLB's who can run in coverage, we have at least one corner who could play man on his own, and safeties who are good.